The present invention relates to commercial display apparatuses and more particularly to an apparatus and method for displaying room wall and floor covering arrangements for consideration and selection by a purchaser.
Few people can claim to be totally satisfied with the sample books, brochures, papers and other devices retailers provide to help consumers select wallpaper, paint, paneling, and other home and office decorating materials. The same is true in connection with floor coverings. Carpet and tile samples must be viewed either in the store or checked out and transported home for consideration and comparison. Such samples are awkward to transport and are time consuming to use as the samples in the first batch taken home, and often in the second, third and fourth batches taken home, are usually just not quite right. They must then be returned in favor of another batch of samples to repeat the process. Even then, the often two-foot square or larger samples are difficult to envision covering the entire floor of the intended room or to envision how they will look with furniture or a particular covering.
Retailers dislike such samples, too, as they take up a great deal of space and must be accounted for when they are checked out. Moreover, customers often browse from store to store first without taking samples home to try. For the retailer, the likelihood of consummating a sale diminishes greatly as soon as the customer leaves the store.
In addition, when comparing paint or wallpaper samples with carpeting or tile samples, a matching of samples is all that is accomplished. And while a skilled interior designer can adeptly visualize and assemble such samples into workable arrangements, the do-it-yourselfer may not want or be able to pay the cost of an interior designer. Consequently, he may have no clue as to the change in the overall appearance of the room he has effected as a result of his wall or floor covering selections, until it""s too late.
Paint samples are notoriously weak visual aids. Gradations of color on paper strips are too small and run together visually when held against the much larger wall surface. This makes it difficult to pick a desirable color. Lighting variations make the problem all the worse. Whether dealing with wallpaper, paneling, paint, tile, carpeting, linoleum, or wood, colors appears differently from one lighting source to another. Thus, an elaborate wall and floor covering color scheme arrangement created in a large store with bright fluorescent lighting often looks markedly different when those items are later installed in the home.
With the explosion of computer technology has come the xe2x80x9cvirtualxe2x80x9d solutionxe2x80x94a computer simulation of a room where the user can mix and match various wall and floor colors, and to some extent textures and patterns, to better visualize design arrangements. While this solution has a number of benefits, the user is still limited to a virtual image that lacks tactile input; that is, the ability to xe2x80x9cfeelxe2x80x9d the materials. Moreover, it is still xe2x80x9cvirtualxe2x80x9d. Even with the impressive improvement in computer technology, computer graphic renderings are simply not as good as the real thing.
What is needed is an improved system for providing wall and floor covering examination and selection for the consumer that is cost efficient for both the retailer and the consumer, is easy to use, and better assists the consumer in envisioning a variety of wall and floor covering combinations installed in the home or office.
Generally speaking, an apparatus is provided to allow a purchaser to select, view and evaluate different wall and floor covering samples in a scaled-down room of a scaled down house or similar structure.
A device for displaying room wall and floor covering arrangements for selection by a purchaser includes a frame assembly having display panel support members for supporting at least one display panel in a display condition, the frame assembly being configured to resemble, along with at least one supported display panel positioned in the display condition, at least one room; and at least two surface covering display panels being mutually different in at least one appearance or composition characteristic, such at least one appearance or composition characteristic including at least one of color, pattern, material, texture, and geometrical composition.
It is an object of the present invention to provide an improved retail display device.
It is another object of the present invention to provide an improved device for facilitating the selection and evaluation of a variety of wall and floor covering samples.
Further objects and advantages of the present invention will become apparent from the following description of the preferred embodiment.